If the dinosaurs had NASA, they would still be roaming the surface of the Earth today. The speculation belongs to the American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and it reminds us all of how truly fragile our planet can be in the face of a threat coming from a huge asteroid.
Astronomers are now focusing their attention on 3200 Phaethon (or Phaethon, simply put), an asteroid that could concern them in the future. There’s no wonder why, as its radius reaches 2.55 km. The space rock has its origin in the Geminids meteor shower.
Phaethon is increasing its rotation speed
According to msn.com, the rotation speed of the Phaethon asteroid is heavily increasing. The orbit of the space rock brings it close to the Sun very often.
At this point, Phaethon poses no danger to our planet. The asteroid is located almost 190 million kilometers away, which also translates to over 1.26 AU (Astronomical Units).
Arecibo planetary scientist Sean Marshall stated as Tech Explorist quotes:
After investigating more carefully, we found that the full data set, from 1989 through 2021, could be fit by a model with constant rotational acceleration. This accelerating model provided a much better fit to the data from 2021 and slightly improved the model’s fits to data from earlier years.
Astronomers also need to keep an eye on other potentially hazardous asteroids. The asteroid belt, which is located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, is teeming with large asteroids that could pose a threat to our planet if they ever hit. Luckily, there’s no clue at this point that any potentially hazardous asteroid is on a collision course with our world.
The name ‘Phaethon’ comes from Greek mythology, as it refers to the son of the sun god Helios.